> I have nothing against recursive descent as an implementation> technique as the output of a tool (other than it can lead to the> acceptance of hand-written recursive descent compilers). Hoever, I> think it is irresponsible to recommend hand-writing recursive descent> parsers. It leads to shoddy programming.>> [If you hadn't said it, I would. Writing code to make it easy for> people who don't understand it to make arbitrary changes does not> strike me as a winning strategy. -John]

Thanks Chris and John !

I look forward to the day when we view recursive-descent hand-written
code as we view hand-written applications in assembly language.

Also, doing research with error recovery, partial parsing, and other
things is virtually impossible with hand-written recursive descent
parsers.

When I first discovered table-driven parsers I was relieved to know
that there was something I could depend on to be free of errors.
Finally, something in computer "science" that has a hint of
engineering associated with it.